“Thus whereas female-female friendships are promoted through face-to-face interaction, male-male friendships are developed through engaging in activities together or side-to-side interaction (Gamble, 2003)(p.1520.”

This year, I met a new friend named Brandon. Brandon is the stereotypical “gay guy”: he’s good looking, he knows a lot about hair and fashion, and his voice is a bit more feminine than would be considered “normal”. The thing I love most about Brandon is that he’s absolutely, flamboyantly loud and obnoxious. He says things that are completely deemed inappropriate, especially by CNU standards (according to him). I won’t even repeat some of the things he says because they’re so vulgar.

However, the moment I decided that he was amazing, was when we sat down at Brickhouse with everyone else and just talked about stuff. Suuuuurrree, we made fun of some people, but it was all good fun and it was essentially a “bonding” experience. Since he’s gay and I’m a girl, I thought a few things were interesting when I thought about the friendship chapter in our book. Our friendship has similarities between male/male friendships and female/female friendships, but not really cross-sex friendships (there’s a quick chart on p. 157). There were both times when we would communicate in a side-to-side manner (essentially by making guy-hunting a sport) and in a face-to face manner just by talking(Gamble, 2003). We also talked about some personal things, but not others–encompassing the breadth and depth portion of female/female interaction (Gamble, 2003). So really, they should do a study that also encompasses the differences in friendships that differ by sexual orientation–though not all gay men are flamboyant, not all of them necessarily behave the same way as heterosexual man would (there are always exceptions).